


For Never Is My Name

by Verasteine



Category: Torchwood
Genre: F/M, Historical
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-31
Updated: 2011-05-31
Packaged: 2017-10-21 06:50:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/222141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Verasteine/pseuds/Verasteine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A conversation from Jack's past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For Never Is My Name

**Author's Note:**

> This is not the fic you're looking for. Just so we're clear on that. Thanks to [](http://51stcenturyfox.livejournal.com/profile)[**51stcenturyfox**](http://51stcenturyfox.livejournal.com/) for looking this over. Fic was written in August 2009 and I'm putting it up now as part of a cleaning out my hard drive effort.

"Why do you keep pictures like that?" she asked, and Jack wondered if she could wrap her mind around his reasons.

"Nothing wrong with them," he replied, and her lip curled in slight disgust.

"They're immoral," she said, but her voice didn't have the haughty tone he would expect with those words.

"I'm immoral," Jack said simply, and sat down in the leather arm chair, leaning back casually. "By your standards."

"My standards? I'm a liberal woman, Jack." For some reason, she was smiling.

"That you are." He glanced at the dark windows before looking back at her figure, sitting on his settee, picture book balanced on her knee. He noticed she hadn't closed the book yet.

She frowned briefly, then dropped her eyes to the black and white photographs on her lap. "Do you look at nude women for pleasure?" she asked.

Her curiosity had become apparent long before the question. "Yes." He smiled at her. "But not in the way you might think."

She smiled back, but it was deliberate. "I'm not an innocent."

He laughed at that, because there was still, after the months they'd known each other, a defensiveness to her posture that suggested she was guarding her virtue against him, while she spent her time convincing him she wasn't all that virtuous.

She frowned again. "Jack--"

"You should make up your mind," he told her.

She ignored him. "Will you tell me why you look at these?" she asked.

He studied her. "Do you think you can understand?"

She wrinkled her nose, opening her mouth to reply, then stopped. After a moment, she said, "What makes you think I couldn't?"

Once again, he found it difficult to put into words the way he thought, and how different it was from her perception. Tonight he wanted to try, if only for practice. "I... I lived in a place where men and women took their clothes off when they wanted to, and no one thought anything of it."

She laughed, a melodious sound that hid the derision he suspected underneath. "There is no such place on this planet."

"You know there's more than this planet."

She was silent for a beat. "Yes." She paused. "Why?"

He tilted his head. "Why, what?"

"Why did they take their clothes off?"

He smiled. "Because they wanted to."

"Yes," she replied, patiently. "But why?"

"Why did they want to?" At her nod, he contemplated. "They enjoyed their bodies. And other peoples'."

She wrinkled her nose again, and he thought he wanted to kiss her. She reached out and picked up her glass, taking a sip of her wine. "Are you trying to tell me about sin?" she asked.

"The world I speak of has no sin," he countered, and waited.

She blinked, then looked again at the book on her knees. "This world does."

"It shouldn't."

She met his eyes. "Alice says you're a godless man."

"Yes."

"You don't fear that?"

"No."

She brushed a blonde curl behind her ear.

"Lydia," he said. She looked up. "I don't fear what I don't believe in. It's a step beyond defying your god. It's not disliking the proscriptions. It's disbelieving the entire concept."

"But you do."

"What?"

"Dislike the proscriptions." She looked at him, and he couldn't tell if she was accusing him or just listening to his words.

"Yes." He sighed, picking up his own glass and swirling the liquid in it.

"Alice says you go with men."

"I do." He looked pointedly at the book on her knees. "There's another like that in the other room."

"With men?"

"Don't be coy," he admonished. "Yes."

"May I see it?" she asked.

"Yes," he said, and stood to fetch it.

"Jack, wait."

He stopped, and she looked up at him. "I didn't mean that."

"What did you mean?"

"I wanted to see if you would show it to me."

He sank back down into his chair. "I don't appreciate being tested."

"I'm sorry," she said.

"Do you want to see it?" he asked. "You're here because you have an interest in men. You may keep that book open on your knee, but I don't think you have an interest in women."

She looked at the book again, but her eyes held, just like before, only an academic interest. "Yes. I suppose."

He leaned back in his seat, stretching out his legs. "Have you seen a nude man?"

"I worked as a nurse in the war," she reminded him. "I have seen nude men."

"In passing," he said, dismissively. "Have you ever studied a man, looked at a naked male body the way you look at that page now?"

Her eyes sparked briefly. "That is none of your concern."

"No." He felt tired again. "But it is the answer to your question."

"What question?" she snapped, just a little.

"Why. You asked me why."

She scoffed, closing the book with a decisive gesture. "You wish to study naked women? And men?"

Her disbelief didn't affect him. Well, he wouldn't let it. He could get lost in the constant derision, which was more common than the open acceptance he craved, but he refused to. The slow path still had an end to it, somewhere.

His silence made her speak further. "You're not a man of whom I'll believe that reason."

"I didn't think you would," he replied, and drank some wine.

"You're godless, you're disrespectful, you're..." She studied him, not just his face, her eyes taking in all of him. "If you were a woman, things would be said of you. Things would be done to you."

He wanted to call attention to her choice of prepositions, but it would derail the discussion. "You call yourself a suffragette," he posited, "but you believe women should guard their virtue."

She drew herself up straighter. "Men aren't going to do it for us. And wanting the right to vote does not equal wanting to be--" Her cheeks flushed. "You are a cad. You ask me here, and I know I'm not the first."

He smiled, putting his glass back on the table. "You can't understand."

"Am I to be dismissed so lightly?" she replied. "I am a woman, therefore I cannot understand the lusts of men? And if I ask that they be tempered, and restrained, I am insulting my own sex? It's you who is simplistic, then."

He waited till she drew breath to further her argument, and said, "What about your lust?"

She looked at the closed book in her lap. "You suppose women should want to look at the book of men you have?"

"I've known women who did."

"Godless women?"

He sighed and shook his head. "This isn't biblical, Lydia."

"I cannot dismiss it out of hand," she replied. "I am a daughter of the Lord."

"Your lord doesn't tell you not to love," Jack replied.

"My Lord tells me to do so in marriage, and with temperance," she replied heatedly. "And He tells you to do the same. Love a woman in marriage and with gentleness."

"And lead her and make her obey," Jack shot back, sitting up. "Your god isn't as gentle as you think."

"God is not at fault for the failure of man to obey his commands."

"He wants you to obey men, and yet you want to defy them and vote."

She breathed out through her nose, a gesture of frustration he was familiar with. "That posits you believe there is a God."

He chuckled humourlessly. "Don't change the subject."

"Don't be coy," she replied, smiling a little.

He settled back in the chair and drank some more wine. "You're not looking for equality. You're looking to buck your rulers. That's fine by me, but don't do it by policing your own."

"My own?" She raised a singular eyebrow at him.

"Women." He set the glass back down. "Freedom means just that. You can't ask for equality and let men be who they are today while telling women to be virtuous."

"You are confusing two issues." She took the book from her lap and laid it on the table. "I do believe man and woman should be held to the same standards. And without the vote, it won't happen."

He laughed, because the future was already his knowledge. "You want the vote so you can make men be more virtuous?"

"Your incredulity is my point," she replied, and her haughtiness was back.

"Lydia, I never hurt anyone. Man or woman. Not here, not--" He swallowed. "I meant to say, I don't take lovers who do not want me."

Her lip curled again. "Man or woman?" He opened his mouth to respond, but she brushed it aside with a gesturing hand. "Never mind. If I were to say yes to whatever sinful acts you have in mind, I surely would still bear the consequences once I leave."

"You don't believe I can be discreet?" He fought to keep detached.

"Discretion only carries one so far."

"Because Alice talks about me?"

"Alice has her own concerns." She paused. "Jack, men like you... They are concerned with practical matters, that there be no conception, that no one will know..." She ran a hand over her skirt. "But even if there were no God to know, there would still be my knowledge. I would know what I had done, what you had done. And I would not be a better person for not letting myself fall pregnant, for not letting my neighbours know."

"You are a worse person for sharing my bed?"

"Do you take that as a personal affront? Because you are the same as any man, in this regard."

He laughed softly. "That's something, I suppose."

She smiled. "Your ego is not relevant in this conversation."

"Well..." he began, but she cut him off.

"Jack, please. I have no interest in your nude photographs. If I were to have one, I would make sure not to indulge in it. It is not right, and that goes beyond my beliefs in liberties or God."

He leant his elbows on his knees and covered his face with his hands. When he looked up, she was studying him again. "I said you would not understand."

"I think I do." She rose slowly, coming around the table and crouching by his chair. "You believe in a world where there is no God, and therefore all His proscriptions don't exist, because you believe that He has put them down, and without Him they will not exist. But you are wrong, because they are natural laws, laws from the dawn of time."

He clamped down on his tired frustration, and took her hand in his. "Yes."

She smiled at him. "I am sorry for you, Jack."

"Don't tell me you'll pray for me," he replied, and was surprised he didn't sound vindictive.

"I won't." She rubbed her thumb over the back of his hand. "I will light a candle for you, but I won't pray, if you don't want me to."

He laughed drily. "I suppose I should thank you."

"I believe you want to be a good man, Jack. You believe you are. And there are good sides to you."

He grit his teeth. "Now I won't thank you."

She rose, sliding her hand through his hair, and stooping to press a kiss to his cheek. "I'm sorry, Jack. I really am. Good night."

He didn't see her to the door, but listened from the chair as she pulled it shut behind her.

\--  
 _finis._


End file.
